A group of Eaton Fire survivors as well as state officials on Saturday welcomed a revised bill pending in the California Senate that establishes a system for faster insurance payouts and preserves legal remedies against large utility companies, but another survivors’ group says more needs to be done for Altadena residents future fire victims.
Lawmakers are expected to vote Tuesday on Senate Bill 492, which cleared committee late last week. The proposed legislation’s latest text was released Saturday morning, and the Every Fire Survivor’s Network, formerly the Eaton Fire Survivors’ Network, noted that the bill:
• does not cap the economic or other damages survivors may recover;
• does not deny recovery aid for smoke-damage claims outside an artificial fire-perimeter line;
• does not limit the ability of local governments or private businesses to recover losses from utilities that cause fires;
• does not limit insurance companies’ right to recover funds from utilities, which would have shifted the costs onto policyholders; and
• does not limit the contingency fees for attorneys who represent individual wildfire survivors.
The proposed law establishes a “fast pay” program to help survivors receive compensation from insurers more quickly allows survivors to file lawsuits and proceed with discovery. Fire survivor advocates said that preserves evidence-gathering that enables survivors, regulators, courts and the public to determine a wildfire’s cause.
Members of Beautiful Altadena, which also advocates for Eaton Fire survivors, were skeptical. According to the group, SB 492 delivers “no meaningful new recovery mechanism, no transformative investment in rebuilding and no corresponding package of financial tools to help the community recover equivalent to those offered to for-profit utilities in this bill.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom called SB 492 “a compromise that blocks hedge funds from profiteering off wildfire survivors, bars utility executives from taking bonuses when their company ignites a fire, and gets money into survivors’ hands faster. It also establishes a Statewide Community Wildfire Strategy to better coordinate prevention and preparedness efforts across the state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is all real progress for future fire survivors.”
He also called for “structural reform” of the state’s disaster insurance system and urged legislators “to build on this progress next year and finish the work we started to secure the Wildfire Fund’s long-term durability, stabilize electricity rates, and ensure fire victims are never again turned into unsecured creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding.”
Newsom and legislators established the state’s Wildfire Fund in 2019 to provide a source of money for reimbursing stakeholder claims after a wildfire caused by a utility company.
Fire survivor advocates pointed out that the proposed legislation does not address that “three for-profit utility monopolies” — Edison International Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. and Sempra — “keep burning down California communities. As documented in Every Fire Survivor’s Network’s Survivor-First Proposal, these three companies have caused three of the five costliest wildfires in world history.”
The EFSN welcomed the changes that became official over the weekend.
“Survivors from across California came to Sacramento and asked our elected representatives to stand with the people whose homes, communities and lives have been devastated,” EFSN Executive Director Joy Chen said in a statement. “They listened. And in the face of extraordinary pressure from some of the most powerful interests in our state, they centered survivors and California families.”
Chen and Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, noted the role of Senate pro Temp Monique Limón, D-Oxnard, in changing the bill’s language.
“Our legislators showed Californians what representative democracy can look like when elected leaders listen to the people they serve,” Chen said. “This is an enormous victory for every Californian who could become the victim of the next utility-caused fire.”
Court said in a statement, “The California Legislature deserves tremendous credit for standing up for wildfire survivors and consumers in the face of intense political pressure. Senate and Assembly leaders protected Californians’ rights and refused to make families pay for fires caused by utilities. This was a remarkable display of courage by our elected representatives.”
Limón issued a statement saying, “After months of conversations on how we can advance the priorities of Californians, we have come to an agreement that supports survivors in their recovery, curbs Wall Street practices that increase costs on consumers and mitigates the destruction of these wildfires in the first place.”
Some fire survivor advocates and energy companies were not so enthusiastic about SB 492.
Shawna Dawson Beer, founder of Beautiful Altadena and an Eaton Fire total loss survivor, was skeptical of the pending legislation’s effectiveness.
“Stopping something worse is not the same thing as winning,” she said in a statement. “We need to ask the most basic questions. What did Altadena actually get out of this deal? What did Eaton Fire survivors get? And what did we secure for the next community destroyed by a utility caused fire? The answer is not much.”
According to Dawson Beer’s group, the Eaton Fire that devastated large portions of Altadena helped create the political urgency that led to SB 492, but the community did not gain anything of significance.
“Altadena was used,” Dawson Beer said. “Our destroyed homes, our dead neighbors, our displacement and our financial devastation became the backdrop for a political negotiation that was never ultimately about us or rebuilding our town. We were the pawn in the game. And now we are being told we won.”
Stephen Sachs, executive director of the nonprofit Sustainable Community Development and an Eaton Fire survivor, called the bill’s final language “legislative sleight of hand.”
“The win is not a win,” Sachs said. “This bill represents a legislative sleight of hand where the utilities and insurance companies won, even though it looked like fire survivors were going to gain a victory. The reality is that fire survivors were positioned as the voice of the opposition, but in the end, walked away with minimal gains.”
Sachs added that “the financial tools we need to rebuild our community are still not there. They have not been made available to us from the beginning, despite our advocating loudly for them with this administration and knowing that tools exist.”
PG&E company officials said the bill does not adequately address the financial risks created by the state’s current framework for determining wildfire liability.
“While the proposed legislation would make some progress in helping wildfire survivors recover and strengthening wildfire preparedness, it would not provide the sustainable solution California needs,” according to PG&E.
According to Edison, “Californians need durable wildfire reform that protects fire survivors, keeps bills affordable and supports critical investments required to make the grid safer and more resilient. The amended Senate Bill 492 does not deliver that reform.
“SB 492 would not ensure that fire survivors have access to wildfire funds first, would not tackle policies that delay recovery and would not address the stable financing framework utilities need to support California’s climate goals and deliver affordable, reliable electricity in a time of increasing demand,” a statement from Edison said.
Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara was among the bill’s proponents.
“Several provisions included in this legislation build upon years of leadership by the Department of Insurance in partnership with our many partners to better align wildfire mitigation, risk transparency, accountability, preparedness and insurance availability,” Lara said in a statement. “These investments recognize an important reality: California’s long-term insurance future depends not only on how we respond to disasters, but on how effectively we reduce and manage risk before natural disasters occur.”
State Farm, the largest insurer of California homeowners, did not respond to a request for comment on SB 492.
The Eaton Fire of January 2025 caused 19 deaths, destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 structures and scorched over 14,000 acres in Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre and adjacent neighborhoods.
Earlier this year the Los Angeles County Fire Department released a report attributing the cause of the fire to electric equipment owned by Southern California Edison Co.
The county’s website on Eaton Fire recovery efforts and issues is recovery.lacounty.gov/disasters/eaton-fire.